Prof Leanne Norman, one of the authors of a Cardiff Metropolitan University study exploring female experiences of performance tennis coaching, says this is common. That ingrained bias came not only from outside commentators, but from his own team and the locker room itself. “But I think we both had a quiet agreement that we were going to make it work: he did his part, I did my part, and we did pretty well.” “I had to prove, I think twice, that I was able to work with a man at this level,” she says. Mauresmo remembers the time as “pretty brutal to start with”. Murray has since said the scrutiny placed on Mauresmo’s work was unlike any he has seen. At the time, Pat Cash wondered how male players might react to a female coach wandering into the changing rooms, overlooking the overwhelmingly male coaching workforce on the WTA tour. Murray remains an outlier in top male players, for hiring two-time major champion Mauresmo at the height of his career. Whereas I do think the women generally tend to have a hitter/coach.” “If we look at Jack Draper working with James Trotman, Liam Broady with Dave Sammel – all very good coaches but wouldn’t for a second think they could hit with them at that level. “A lot more of the male players are friends, if I’m honest, they have that good camaraderie and are quite happy to leave practice at the door – I wish that we had that more on the women’s side,” she says. That is attractive to a lot of women on tour, especially as they are said to be less inclined to practise with other players than the men are.Ĭlarke, who coached her brother Jay throughout his teens, says this means women are automatically at a disadvantage when it comes to jobs on the women’s tour, as they are unlikely to be able to offer the same power on the other side of the net. It was a short but revealing list of priorities that many players share when it comes to picking a coach, and they can act as key barriers blocking women from jobs on tour.ĭart, like others, will be keen to keep costs low, so a coach that doubles up as a hitting partner is a two-for-one deal. “He’s young, he can hit well, he can travel a lot, it’s going alright so far,” she said. I think it’s embedded in the game, it’s about changing attitudes.”īut why is this? This season, British No 5 Harriet Dart shared a summary of her new coach. But I heard recently a female player saying she was criticised for having a female coach. I was thinking, wow, we’re getting there. “In 2017, there was Garbine Muguruza with Conchita Martinez, Jelena Ostapenko with Anabel Medina Garrigues. “A few years ago, that’s when I thought we were really on to something,” former British player and now coach Yasmin Clarke says. On the ATP website there are 231 active coach members listed: just one – Anastasia Kukushkina, who previously coached her husband Mikhail – is female.įor a sport that pertains to be a leader when it comes to gender equity, it is striking that women all but disappear when it comes to coaching at the top level. Of those eight, three are mothers to the player they coach and five are former WTA players. There are only eight women listed as full-time coaches for the WTA’s top 200 players, accounting for just four per cent. Those brief glimpses of coaches, physiotherapists and fitness trainers paint a sorry picture of the state of gender equality in tennis. Next time they do, start counting how many women you can see. Watch any tennis match, on either the men’s or women’s tour, and the cameras inevitably pan to the player’s team in the stands. When Andy Murray, then world No 1, appointed Mauresmo as his coach it was hailed as a watershed moment for women in coaching but – nine years on – she says flatly: “It didn’t really help, actually.” “I guess people are still not ready.” That is Amelie Mauresmo’s verdict on female coaches in tennis.
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